Make no mistake: after 15 years of losing wars, spreading terror movements, and multiplying failed states across the Greater Middle East, America will fight the next versions of our ongoing wars. Not that we ever really stopped. Sure, Washington traded in George W. Bush’s expansive, almost messianic attitude toward his Global War on Terror for Barack Obama’s more precise, deliberate, even cautious approach to an unnamed version of the same war for hegemony in the Greater Middle East. Sure, in the process kitted-up 19 year-olds from Iowa became less ubiquitous features on Baghdad’s and Kabul’s busy boulevards, even if that distinction was lost on the real-life targets of America’s wars — and the bystanders (call them “collateral damage”) scurrying across digital drone display screens.

It’s hardly a brilliant observation to point out that, more than 15 years later, the entire region is a remarkable mess. So much worse off than Washington found it, even if all of that mess can’t simply be blamed on the United States — at least not directly. It’s too late now, as the Trump administration is discovering, to retreat behind two oceans and cover our collective eyes. And yet, acts that might still do some modest amount of good (resettling refugees, sending aid, brokering truces, anything within reason to limit suffering) don’t seem to be on any American agenda.

So, after 16 years of inconclusive or catastrophic regional campaigns, maybe it’s time to stop dreaming about how to make things better in the Greater Middle East and try instead to imagine how to make things worse (since that’s the path we often seem to take anyway). Here, then, is a little thought experiment for you: what if Washington actually wanted to lose? How might the U.S. government go about accomplishing that? Let me offer a quick (and inevitably incomplete) to-do list on the subject:

As a start, you would drop an enlarged, conventional army into Iraq and/or Syria. This would offer a giant red, white, and blue target for all those angry, young radicalized men just dying (pardon the pun) to extinguish some new “crusader” force. It would serve as an effective religious-nationalist rallying cry (and target) throughout the region.

Then you would create a news-magnet of a ban (or at least the appearance of one) on immigrants and visitors of every sort from predominantly Muslim countries coming to the United States. It’s hardly an accident that ISIS has taken to calling the president’s proposed executive order to do just that “the blessed ban” and praising Donald Trump as the “best caller to Islam.” Such actions only confirm the extremist narrative: that Muslims are unwelcome in and incompatible with the West, that liberal plurality is a neo-imperial scam.

Finally, you would feed the common perception in the region that Washington’s support for Israel and assorted Arab autocrats is unconditional. To do so, you would go out of your way to hold fawning public meetings with military strongmen like Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and suggest that, when it came to Israel, you were considering changing American policy when it comes to a two-state solution and the illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine. Such policies would feed another ISIS narrative: U.S. support for illiberal despots and the failure of the Arab Spring is proof that practicing Muslims and peaceful Islamists will never successfully gain power through the democratic process.

Key to such a losing strategy would be doing anything you could to reinforce ISIS’s twisted narrative of an end-of-days battle between Islam and Christendom, a virtuous East versus a depraved West, an authentic Caliphate against hypocritical democracies. In what amounts to a war of ideas, pursuing such policies would all but hand victory to ISIS and other jihadi extremist groups. And so you would have successfully created a strategy for losing eternally in the Greater Middle East. And if that was the desired outcome in Washington, well, congratulations all around, but of course we all know that it wasn’t.

Let’s take these three points in such a losing strategy one by one. (Of course “losing” is itself a contested term, but for our purposes, consider the U.S. to have lost as long as its military spins its wheels in a never-ending quagmire, while gradually empowering various local “adversaries.”)

Just a Few Thousand More Troops Will Get It Done…

There are already thousands of American soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Syria, to say nothing of the even more numerous troops and sailors stationed on bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, and other states ringing America’s Middle Eastern battlefields. Still, if you want to mainline into the fastest way to lose the next phase of the war on terror, just blindly acquiesce in the inevitable requests of your commanders for yet more troops and planes needed to finish the job in Syria ( and Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Yemen, and so on).

Let’s play this out. First, the worst (and most plausible) case: U.S. ground forces get sucked into an ever more complex, multi-faceted civil war — deeper and deeper still, until one day they wake up in a world that looks like Baghdad, 2007, all over again.

Or, lest we be accused of defeatism, consider the best case: those endlessly fortified and reinforced American forces wipe the floor with ISIS and just maybe manage to engineer the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime as well. It’s V-Day in the Middle East! And then what? What happens the day after? When and to whom do American troops turn over power?

* The Kurds? That’s a nonstarter for Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, all countries with significant Kurdish minorities.

* The Saudis? Don’t count on it. They’re busy bombing Houthi Shias in Yemen (with U.S.-supplied ordnance) and grappling with the diversification of their oil-based economy in a world in which fossil fuels are struggling.

* Russia? Fat chance. Bombing “terrorists”? Yes. Propping up an autocratic client to secure basing rights? Sure. Temporary transactional alliances of convenience in the region? Absolutely. But long-term nation-building in the heart of the Middle East? It’s just not the style of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a country with its own shaky petro-economy.

* So maybe leave Assad in power and turn the country back over to what’s left of his minority, Alawite-dominated regime? That, undoubtedly, is the road to hell. After all, it was his murderous, barrel-bombing, child-gassing acts that all but caused the civil war in the first place. You can be sure that, sooner or later, Syria’s majority Sunni population and its separatist Kurds would simply rebel again, while (as the last 15 years should have taught us) an even uglier set of extremists rose to the surface.

Keep in mind as well that, when it comes to the U.S. military, the Iraqi and Afghan “surges” of 2007 and 2009 offered proof positive that more ground troops aren’t a cure-all in such situations. They are a formula for expending prodigious amounts of money and significant amounts of blood, while only further alienating local populations. Meanwhile, unleashing manned and drone aircraft strikes, which occasionally kill large numbers of civilians, only add to the ISIS narrative.

Every mass casualty civilian bombing or drone strike incident just detracts further from American regional credibility. While both air strikes and artillery barrages may hasten the offensive progress of America’s Kurdish, Iraqi, and Syrian allies, that benefit needs to be weighed against the moral and propaganda costs of those dead women and children. For proof, see the errant bombing strike on an apartment building in Mosul last month. After all, those hundred-plus civilians are just as dead as Assad’s recent victims and just as many angry, grieving family members and friends have been left behind.

In other words, any of the familiar U.S. strategies, including focusing all efforts on ISIS or toppling Assad, or a bit of both, won’t add up to a real policy for the region. No matter how the Syrian civil war shakes out, Washington will need a genuine “what next” plan. Unfortunately, if the chosen course predictably relies heavily on the military lever to shape Syria’s shattered society, America’s presence and actions will only (as in the past) aggravate the crisis and help rejuvenate its many adversaries.

“The Blessed Ban”

The Trump administration’s proposed “travel ban” quickly became fodder for left-versus-right vitriol in the U.S. Here’s a rundown on what it’s likely to mean when it comes to foreign policy and the “next” war. First, soaring domestic fears over jihadi terror attacks in this country and the possible role of migrants and refugees in stoking them represent a potentially catastrophic over-reaction to a modest threat. Annually, from 2005 to 2015, terrorists killed an average of just seven Americans on U.S. soil. You are approximately 18,000 times more likely to die in some sort of accident than from such an attack. In addition, according to a study by the conservative Cato Institute, from 1975 to 2015 citizens of the countries included in Trump’s first ban (including Iraq and Syria) killed precisely zero people in the United States. Nor has any refugee conducted a fatal domestic attack here. Finally, despite candidate and President Trump’s calls for “extreme vetting” of Muslim refugees, the government already has a complex, two-year vetting process for such refugees which is remarkably “extreme.”

Those are the facts. What truly matters, however, is the effect of such a ban on the war of ideas in the Middle East. In short, it’s manna from heaven for ISIS’s storyline in which Americans are alleged to hate all Muslims. It tells you everything you need to know that, within days of the administration’s announcement of its first ban, ISIS had taken to labeling it “blessed,” just as al-Qaeda once extolled George W. Bush’s 2003 “blessed invasion” of Iraq. Even Senator John McCain, a well-known hawk, worried that Trump’s executive order would “probably give ISIS some more propaganda.”

Remember, while ISIS loves to claim responsibility for every attack in the West perpetrated by lost, disenfranchised, identity-seeking extremist youths, that doesn’t mean the organization actually directs them. The vast majority of these killers are self-radicalized citizens, not refugees or immigrants. One of the most effective — and tragic — ways to lose this war is to prove the jihadis right.

The Hypocrisy Trap

Another way to feed the ISIS narrative is to bolster perceptions of diplomatic insincerity. Americans tend to be some of the least self-aware citizens on the planet. (Is it a coincidence that ours is about the only population left still questioning the existence of climate change?) Among the rare things that Democrats and Republicans agree on, however, is that America is a perennial force for good, in fact the force for good on Earth. As it happens, the rest of the world begs to differ. In Gallup global polls, the United States has, in fact, been identified as the number one threat to world peace! However uncomfortable that may be, it matters.

One reason many Middle Easterners, in particular, believe this to be so stems from Washington’s longstanding support for regional autocrats. In fiscal year 2017, Egypt’s military dictator and Jordan’s king will receive $1.46 and $1 billion respectively in U.S. foreign aid — nearly 7% of its total assistance budget. After leading a coup to overturn Egypt’s elected government, General Sisi was officially persona non grata in the White House (though President Obama reinstated $1.3 billion in military aid in 2015). Sisi’s recent visit to the Trump White House changed all that as, in a joint press conference, the president swore that he was “very much behind” Egypt and that Sisi himself had “done a fantastic job.” In another indicator of future policy, the State Department dropped existing human rights conditions for the multibillion-dollar sale of F-16s to Bahrain’s monarchy. All of this might be of mild interest, if it weren’t for the way it bolstered ISIS claims that democracy is just an “idol,” and the democratic process a fraud that American presidents simply ignore.

Then there’s Israel, already the object of deep hatred in the region, and now clearly about to receive a blank check of support from the Trump administration. The role that Israeli leaders already play in American domestic politics is certainly striking to Arab audiences. Consider how unprecedented it was in 2015 to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticize a sitting president before a joint session of Congress in an Israeli election year and receive multiple, bipartisan standing ovations. Even so, none of this prevented the Obama administration, domestically labeled “weak on Israel,” from negotiating a record $38 billion military aid deal with that country.

While violent Palestinian fighters are far from blameless, for 40 years Israel has increasingly created facts on the ground meant to preclude a viable Palestinian state. Netanyahu and his predecessors increased illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories, built an exclusion wall, and further divided the West Bank by constructing a network of roads meant only for the Israeli military and Jewish settlers.

Although most world leaders, publics, and the United Nations see the Jewish settlements on the West Bank as a major impediment to peace, the current U.S. ambassador to Israel was once the president of a fundraising group supporting just such an Israeli settlement. The notion that he could be an honest broker in peace talks borders on the farcical.

All of this, of course, matters when it comes to Washington’s unending wars in the region. Even Secretary of Defense James Mattis, soon after leaving the helm of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), recognized that he “paid a military security price every day as a commander of CENTCOM because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel.” So, you want to lose? Keep feeding the ISIS narrative on democracy and Israel just as the Trump administration is doing, even as it sends more troops into the region and heightens bombing and drone raids from Syria to Yemen.

Send in the Cavalry…

If the next phase of the generational struggle for the Middle East is once again to be essentially a military one, while the Trump administration feeds every negative American stereotype in the region, then it’s hard to see a future of anything but defeat. A combination of widespread American ignorance and the intellectual solace of simplistic models lead many here to ascribe jihadist terrorism to some grand, ethereal hatred of “Christendom.”

The reality is far more discomfiting. Consider, for instance, a document from “ancient” history: Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa against the United States. At that time, he described three tangible motives for jihad: U.S. occupation of Islam’s holiest lands in the Middle East, U.S. attacks on and sanctions against Iraq, and American support for Israel’s “occupation” of Jerusalem. If ISIS and al-Qaeda’s center of gravity is not their fighting force but their ideology (as I believe it is), then the last thing Washington should want to do is substantiate any of these three visions of American motivation — unless, of course, the goal is to lose the war on terror across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa.

In that case, the solution is obvious: Washington should indeed insert more troops and set up yet more bases in the region, maintain unqualified support for right-wing Israeli governments and assorted Arab autocrats, and do its best to ban Muslim refugees from America. That, after all, represents the royal road to affirming al-Qaeda’s, and now ISIS’s, overarching narratives. It’s a formula — already well used in the last 15 years — for playing directly into the enemy’s hands and adhering to its playbook, for creating yet more failed states and terror groups throughout the region.

When it comes to Syria in particular, there are some shockingly unexamined contradictions at the heart of Washington’s reactions to its war there. President Trump, for instance, recently spoke emotionally about the “beautiful babies cruelly murdered” in Idlib, Syria. Yet, the administration’s executive order on travel bans any Syrian refugees — including beautiful babies — from entering this country. If few Americans recognize the incongruity or hypocrisy of this, you can bet that isn’t true in the Arab world.

For ISIS, today’s struggle in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere is part of an unremitting, apocalyptic holy war between Islam and the West. That narrative is demonstrably false. The current generation of jihadis sprang from tangible grievances and perceived humiliations perpetrated by recent Western policies. There was nothing “eternal” about it. The first recorded suicide bombings in the Middle East didn’t erupt until the early 1980s. So forget the thousand-year struggle or even, in Western terms, the “clash of civilizations.” It took America’s military-first policies in the region to generate what has now become perpetual war with spreading terror insurgencies.

[Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]

(Republished from TomDispatch by permission of author or representative)

“Russia? Fat chance. Bombing “terrorists”? Yes. Propping up an autocratic client to secure basing rights? Sure. Temporary transactional alliances of convenience in the region? Absolutely. But long-term nation-building in the heart of the Middle East? It’s just not the style of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a country with its own shaky petro-economy.”
This man is projecting his own pettiness on Russia.
Basing rights is what its all about?
He doesn’t see that what he calls “temporary transactional alliances of convenience in the region” are necessary – if successful, even partly – for restoring a minimum of livability in the ME? Or does he have any other reasons to resent Russia’s peace-making efforts?
He really believes that a “shaky petro-economy” could not do what Russia is doing in Syria?
And he has to make up his mind: does he expect Putin to ditch Syria because he (Putin) is too poor to afford any sustained help, or because of his mean-spiritedness and crass selfishness?
Well, the Syrians have a different opinion: “God sent Russia to save us,” says a Syrian bishop:

These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Troll, or LOL with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used once per hour.

It’s been said US lost in Vietnam. But US was untouched. Its people went on having BBQs, partying, dancing, etc.

In contrast, Vietnam lost 2 million people and the nation was devastated.

It’s been said US failed to win in Iraq. Some say US lost. But US wasn’t touched by the war. People went shopping, watched TV, ate and drank and got fat.

In contrast, 100,000s of Iraqis died and millions had their lives ruined.

So, it doesn’t matter if US ‘loses’ the next war in the Middle East. The fact is US will be untouched. In contrast, even if the Middle Eastern nation does not lose to the US or even ‘wins’, its nation will be devastated, and 100,000s will have died, millions will have been affected.

To ‘win’ against the US is far more traumatic and damaging than it is for the US to ‘lose’.

Given all the horrors the US committed in the Middle East and Libya since the Cold War, the US really deserves the Japan-Germany treatment in WWII.

US does its ‘losing’ in other people’s nations. This ‘losing’ devastates other nations while the American Nation remains untouched by bombs, invasions, missiles, tanks, jets, etc.

US needs to stop ‘losing’ in other people’s lands. Even when they ‘win’, they lose so many lives and see their entire cities destroyed while Americans remain safe and get fat on burgers.

US needs to stop ‘losing’ in other people’s lands. Even when they ‘win’, they lose so many lives and see their entire cities destroyed while Americans remain safe and get fat on burgers.

That's true enough, but what's really surprising is the US public's total lack of concern/empathy for the massive destruction they're inflicting on civilians in the Middle East, and their indifference to their government lying to them on WMD.

So I would say that they're safe and fat, but also sleazy and broke, since that's what happens when deficit nations spend 15 years fighting these kind of wars on credit.

Correct. Everything goes according to the Plan. Countries to be destroyed. Terrorism is to be spread. These are planned and desired outcomes. These wars are actually won not lost.

I agree with you. It is almost as if there is a conspiracy to fill the collective head space with superficial linear thinking. A sequence of implemented game plans that verifies the model and then is applied with full force to the hard nuts. The model is likely called humpty-dumpty-stans.

While some of what he says seems reasonable, once it becomes apparent that he totally buys into the yankee propaganda on Syria from barrel bombs to accepting the reality that the Syrian govt, not el qaeda, was the sponsor of the gas attacks, he reduces himself to just one more shill for the nihilist power structure.

This guy is obviously an enthusiast for importing Muslims into the US. I can only conclude that he is a Liberal Democrat who who is an enthusiast for radically changing the racial demographics of the US vis importing nonwhite Legal Immigrants. That is to say, he wants a nonwhite majority. He is waging Democratic Party demographic war against The Historic Native Born White American Majority. He’s a punk. This is the trash being produced by West Point.

If we don’t allow Muslims into the US…we piss off ISIS…and young Muslim “American” Males will therefore become radicalized and commit acts of terror on US soil. I see this as a reason for expelling all Muslims….Never have to worry about a ISIS terrorist attacked on US soil.

Another General Casey in the making.

This creep wants Muslims to come legally into America, so they can legally vote The Historic Native Born White American Majority into a racial minorityinto a violently persecuted racial minority.

, I agree! Its all on purpose. ISIS is the perfect enemy. Its weak and it replenishes itself. There are those like Petraeus and Daniel Pipes who want to strengthen the Salafi Jihadist. They find them useful.

The Shia and Sunnis have found something they hated more than Israel, autocrats, Russians, and Americans. Each other.

A five year Native Born White Christian American child…a little girl…was gang raped and urinated on by three Legal Immigrant Muslim Males who worked at the Chobani Yogurt Plant in Idaho City Idaho City Idaho. And this piece of garbage wants to keep importing Legal Immigrant Muslims. For no other reason than he wants Muslims voting Whitey into a racial minority within the borders of the US.

The US Military needs to be massively defunded. The higher ranking Officer Corp is screening for race-replacement enthusiasts for future Majors…Colonels….and…Generals…

Despite the caveats put at the end of the article, the author is a military employee and anything he writes is with the consent of the military hierarchy. The US military likes to think it is the best in the world but its performance in the Middle East and elsewhere in the last 15 years has been abject. There are obviously many serious weaknesses in the military which have caused this situation.
As a military apologist, Sjursen’s job is to deflect criticism of the military by blaming everybody else. There is no criticism of the military per se. Now the criticism of other actors in the Middle East may be well merited. Often, however, Sjursen just regurgitates the usual fake news seen on MSM.
Thus President Assad’s ” murderous, barrel bombing, child-gassing acts that all but caused the war in the first place. ” There is no real evidence of any of this. And the insurrection was ending in Autumn 2011 when the US, Saudi Arabia et al started to supply ISIS and others with the weapons.
If military high command felt the wars were unconstitutional, or the military were being tasked with wars incapable of conclusion, then officers should have resigned and told the world their reasons. As it is, the number of high ranking officers who resigned over Iraq, Afghanistan and other matters is very, very small.
I don’t take this Sjursen guy seriously. He is just a PR man for some very unsavoury individuals.

"...The US military likes to think it is the best in the world but its performance in the Middle East and elsewhere in the last 15 years has been abject..."

This kind of talk is by people who don't understand that we have limited troops. We do not have enough troops to stabilize several countries at once. How many actual armed troops can we field at one time? 50,000, 100,000?? It's not a lot as 1/3 will be retraining, 1/3 will be resting and rearming and 1/3 will be fighting.

Now if we were in a fight for our lives and it was kill everyone you could the pattern would change rapidly. We could kill off the whole middle east fairly quick even conventionally. So it's not a matter of us not being able to win it's that we don't choose to genocide the population.

How long do you think Afghanistan could hold out if we attacked in sectors, killed all the Men and enslaved the Women and Children and sold them?

Such actions only confirm the extremist narrative: that Muslims are unwelcome in and incompatible with the West, that liberal plurality is a neo-imperial scam.

They are incompatible as immigrants (in large, civilisation changing numbers), as any foreigners with radically different cultural backgrounds should be, they should be unwelcome because of that (again, in large numbers), and “liberal plurality” certainly is a neo-imperial scam inasmuch as it is applied to a multicultural empire rather than a culturally coherent nation state.

“The bad guys think it, so we must deny it” is a pretty stupid approach to trying to understand the world.

President Trump, for instance, recently spoke emotionally about the “beautiful babies cruelly murdered” in Idlib, Syria. Yet, the administration’s executive order on travel bans any Syrian refugees — including beautiful babies — from entering this country. If few Americans recognize the incongruity or hypocrisy of this, you can bet that isn’t true in the Arab world.

There is nothing whatsoever that is “hypocritical” about this – feeling sorry for child victims of war has no relevance whatsoever to immigration policy and vice versa. Which of course doesn’t prevent dishonest propagandists on both sides from making it out to be, as we can see.

What most certainly is colossally hypocritical is making a song and dance about children supposedly killed by enemy weapons (albeit unfashionable ones) whilst ignoring far greater numbers murdered by being torn apart by explosions and shrapnel inflicted upon them by our own allies and our own forces.

Trump has been remarkably successful at ignoring the Yemeni children slaughtered by his Saudi allies, or for that matter the refugee children deliberately targeted by the Al Qaeda allies he was helping with his attack on Syrian conscripts and servicemen, just a few days afterwards.

But for some reason this writer ignores that gaping open goal, to instead try to make a fallacious attempt to push his own hippy, “one world” open borders ideology.

The main thesis of the author is sound. The US policy is self defeating, destructive and in the end it strengthens ISIS. However, the author as most Americans focuses on the US policy as if US policy matters. In reality whatever the US does or does not will not change substantially the larger social, economic and ideological processes in the Middle East. These are:
First: population exposition in the region that generates tens of million people every ten years that cannot be absorbed into local economy. They are attracted to more prosperous neighboring Europe which detests them but still rescues them from the sea by the hundreds of thousands every year thus increasing the pool of angry young Muslims in Europe. The US action or inaction on this front changes nothing.
Second: tribal religious identity fragmentation of the region. In each of the ME country there is a significant religious or tribal or ethnic minority. For centuries they lived in oblivion and no one ever knew about Christians in Syria. Now for the first time in centuries we have a conflict in Syria, In Egypt between Christians and Muslims. Actually it is not a conflict it is Sunny aggression against the Christians. Alowites, Shia, Druze, Yazidies, Sunnies are suddenly rediscovering their religious, tribal, regional identities as the only thing that matters to them. Assad’s most reliable units of the army are Alawites. In Bahrein the Shia majority is waiting for a convenient moment to overthrow the rule of the Sunny dynasty as they did in Yemen. Even in Morocco the long dormant Berbers are rediscovering their ancient non-Arab identity. This is the process that Huntington called indigenization. What can the US do about it? Absolutely nothing.
Third: And finally, the moral dimension. The author is right the American policy reveals is hypocrisy, double standard that generates more hostility to the US. But here again, the deeper, underlying issue is the moral decay of the West, something that Ben Laden also wrote about. For the good practicing Muslims who are not supporters of ISIS or anyone close to those folks, for whom the US and Europe are countries they potentially would like to work or visit for those people equalization of marriage between a man and a woman with the gays is unacceptable and incomprehensible. That is only one example. What they dislike is the collapse of the family, of parental authority, of morals and lifestyles. They detest endless stream of semi naked women in mass media, my body my sex propaganda in journals like Cosmopolitan. It is a clash of civilizations of traditional values and Western permissiveness, abandonment of what really are Christian family values. Here again the US cannot do anything about. That clash is going to grow and blow up into the face of the West.

Cosmopolitan is a WOMEN'S magazine, not a porn magazine bought by men. Cosmo is a fashion and beauty magazine for young women. It also has some good advice about jobs, doing well once one gets the job, cars and apartments and furniture for young people just starting out.

The Muslim countries have the highest rate of both hetero and male homo internet porn use in the world and you think Cosmo is degenerate? You must be a fanatic Muslim.

In the west rape, slavery sex slavery and sex with minors is illegal. In Muslim countries rape is not a crime, rape victims even 5 year olds are murdered by their families including their mothers and the men are so oversexed that the sight of the arm or ankle of a women drives them beserk.

Are you a Swedish or German feminazi who defends Muslim immigrant rape on the grounds that when Muslim immigrants see a woman not covered in black shrouds from head to foot the Muslim man has the right to rape the woman because she outrages his sense of modesty?

What kind of man reads Cosmopolitan anyway? Do you need advice not to wear black nail polish to a job interview?

So maybe leave Assad in power and turn the country back over to what’s left of his minority, Alawite-dominated regime? That, undoubtedly, is the road to hell. After all, it was his murderous, barrel-bombing, child-gassing acts that all but caused the civil war in the first place. You can be sure that, sooner or later, Syria’s majority Sunni population and its separatist Kurds would simply rebel again, while (as the last 15 years should have taught us) an even uglier set of extremists rose to the surface.

Someone has been reading the NYT with assiduity or is mixing up the Iraq and Syria timelines.

Also, Lybia is not part of the “Middle East” but the catastrophe of the “Lybian Intervention” and what it might mean and how influence people’s decision-making should at least be given one or two paragraphs.

It is hard to agree with anything a pentagon hack has to say. The author spent his whole life as an amoral toady for the evil American Empire and he expects ordinary decent people to take him seriously in the same way we are told to take warmongers like petraeus as heroes and military geniuses. Anyone who works for the anti Christ ought to be shunned.

For ISIS, today’s struggle in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere is part of an unremitting, apocalyptic holy war between Islam and the West. That narrative is demonstrably false. The current generation of jihadis sprang from tangible grievances and perceived humiliations perpetrated by recent Western policies. There was nothing “eternal” about it. The first recorded suicide bombings in the Middle East didn’t erupt until the early 1980s. So forget the thousand-year struggle or even, in Western terms, the “clash of civilizations.” It took America’s military-first policies in the region to generate what has now become perpetual war with spreading terror insurgencies.

US policies in the ME since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 certainly have been egregiously stupid and destructive, and reading this article you would almost think that was the end of the story. Apart from a brief (though revealing) mention of Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa against the United States, you’d almost think everything was peace and love beforehand.

But it wasn’t. The US has been interfering violently both directly and indirectly in the ME continuously since WW2, having taken over the role of the European colonial empires there. The US was not the main supporter of Israel in the early days, when Zionism was primarily a socialist enterprise (kibbutzim, and eastern European communist backing), but it certainly became Israel’s chief enabler from the 1970s onwards. For sure there was plenty of anti-American sentiment in the region by the late 1970s, albeit until the rise of modern Islamism it was expressed through the socialist and nationalist ideologies and organisations that then represented Arab and muslim revulsion with the established order.

It’s worth remembering that the rise of Islamism to replace the likes of the Baathist and other socialist and nationalist ideologies was partly because of the evident failure of those ideologies to ultimately solve the problems of the peoples in question, but also in large part facilitated by the deliberate promotion of islamist jihadism by the US and Israel as tools against those older enemies. The US used Saudi-mediated sunni jihadism in Afghanistan to defeat its rival there, and in doing so boosted it immensely, and Israel used the same forces in Palestine to divide and defeat the PLO and other such groups

It’s true that US foreign policy has been particularly ham-fisted in the past few decades, probably as much in the handling of relations with Russia from the 1990s onwards as in the ME. But context is still important. These problems in the ME didn’t spring out of nowhere. The attacks Americans feel most bitter and resentful about, and mostly see as unprovoked attacks on them (Iranian embassy hostages, Beirut marine barracks bombing, 9/11) are invariably blowback from previous interventionist US policies in the region.

When you interfere in other people’s fights, you are likely to get punched yourself. Sadly, when our leaders do the interfering on a national scale, it’s almost invariably innocents who get to suffer the consequences.

I came to the same thought. "Barrel bomb" is a trite bit of silliness that rolls off the tongue, but it discredits the user immediately. In addition, the writer implies that "barrel bombs" were the cause, not the response, to the uprising.

” So maybe leave Assad in power and turn the country back over to what’s left of his minority, Alawite-dominated regime? That, undoubtedly, is the road to hell. After all, it was his murderous, barrel-bombing, child-gassing acts that all but caused the civil war in the first place.”

Ignoring for the moment the veracity if the claims that these “provacative” attacks on the Syrian people were by the Syrian military, didn’t the alleged barrel bombing and child-gassing start after the Saudi & Quatari financed and US equipped “moderate” rebels started the civil war?

As others have also noted, his preoccupation with making the muslim world welcome in the west, part of which is based on its fecundity, is also dubious: Like he is saying, “If we don’t let them come, they will overrun us anyway by shear dint of numbers.” Strange for a US military man to say “We surrender” before the real fight has really begun.

When it comes to Syria in particular, there are some shockingly unexamined contradictions at the heart of Washington’s reactions to its war there. President Trump, for instance, recently spoke emotionally about the “beautiful babies cruelly murdered” in Idlib, Syria. Yet, the administration’s executive order on travel bans any Syrian refugees — including beautiful babies — from entering this country.

Having to stay in your own country instead of being brought to America is not equivalent to being cruelly murdered. I do not see the contradiction whereby Trump refusing to accept a single individual on the basis of logically unlimited (refugees could easily amount to a third of the Syrian population) right of admission to the US, precludes him from action to stop Assad killing Syrian noncombatants like he was a farmer and they were bugs.

You are essentially correct that a meaningful Palestinian state is now difficult (
actually impossible) and the Arabs are going to be very angry. Israel is too politically strong in the US and thats an end to it

Major Danny Sjursen is another example of the many rootless-placeless creatures manufactured at West Point and the other Military Academies since 1971. White Teenage Males enter West Point and then get indoctrinated into the placeless-rootless Cosmopolitan World View…and then sent off for multiple tours of duty in far away lands-for further training in disconnecting emotionally and psychologically from the Historic American Nation…Up to the point of hating The Historic Native Born White American Nation so much…that a West Point Professor of Civil Rights of Scandavian ancestry is enthusiastic about inflicting a Mohammadan Somalian Gang Rape Army on the Scandanavian American Teenage Girls of Minnesota.

Major Sjursen was immersed in SPLC Civil Rights indoctrination as a Cadet. He now teaches the history of Civil Rights to the SheboonWest Point Cadets who give enthusiastic Black Power salutes in group photos. Major Sjursen will advance his career in the homo-friendly US Military by enthusiastically demonizing the Native Born White Working Class resistance to the open and deliberate policy of post-1965 race-replacement immigration policy.

Stopped reading after this hideous lie: “After all, it was [Assad's] murderous, barrel-bombing, child-gassing acts that all but caused the civil war in the first place. ”

Assad was just dropping barrel bombs on innocent people for no reason whatsoever? Or was it because the “Day of Rage” “protesters” (wink wink wink) murdered dozens of Syrian police officers in coordinated attacks across the country that day?

Shame on the author and shame on Takis. There are already so many al Qaeda propaganda outlets in the West, do we really need another one?

Also, how could a US military strategist fail to take note of the fact that the (((US))) ZOG machine intentionally created al Qaeda and ISIS and continues to foster them through supplying weapons, training, money, logistics and political support? How many videos do we need to see of US coalition planes dropping ammo and food to ISIS until we demand that whoever is in charge be lawfully executed for treason?

To recap. Ford now asserts that he and Obama did not want immediate violent "regime change" in Syria. That they wanted to have a dialogue and negotiate with the Assad government.

Rifai, who was there from the very beginning, says that those are lies. In his talks with the opposition Ford argued against any negotiations. His talks were not about peace or dialogue. They were for blatant, violent "regime change".

I found it difficult, nigh impossible, to get past this guy’s 2nd claim that implementing a filter on immigration (which is not how this fool puts it) is a gigantic recruiting tool for ISIS.

Yeah, Trump is playing right into Muslim extremist hands by preventing those from certain Muslim-majority countries (but not, by far, all Muslim-majority countries) from just walking through the gates without any vetting!

A promising premise (that escalating war by America plays into the extremists’ hands), made completely bunk as it loses its integrity (and its point) to virtual signaling bullshit.

By this moron’s reasoning, if we don’t vet immigrants, the terrorists will win. Implying the “solution:” let everyone in everywhere, forget about jobs for Americans, forget about American culture and moreés. And why? Because fear.

Be very afraid, Americans. Letting in radical Muslim extremists (or their unassimilable equivalent: fundamentalist Muslims who believe women should be covered and silenced among other fundamental un-American beliefs) is the only solution for us!

Make no mistake: after 15 years of losing wars, spreading terror movements, and multiplying failed states across the Greater Middle East, America will fight the next versions of our ongoing wars. Not that we ever really stopped. Sure, Washington traded in George W. Bush’s expansive, almost messianic attitude toward his Global War on Terror for Barack Obama’s more precise, deliberate, even cautious approach to an unnamed version of the same war for hegemony in the Greater Middle East. Sure, in the process kitted-up 19 year-olds from Iowa became less ubiquitous features on Baghdad’s and Kabul’s busy boulevards, even if that distinction was lost on the real-life targets of America’s wars — and the bystanders (call them “collateral damage”) scurrying across digital drone display screens.

It’s hardly a brilliant observation to point out that, more than 15 years later, the entire region is a remarkable mess. So much worse off than Washington found it, even if all of that mess can’t simply be blamed on the United States — at least not directly. It’s too late now, as the Trump administration is discovering, to retreat behind two oceans and cover our collective eyes. And yet, acts that might still do some modest amount of good (resettling refugees, sending aid, brokering truces, anything within reason to limit suffering) don’t seem to be on any American agenda.

America had a lot of illusions in Vietnam and in the Middle East as well. Strong as the Superpower was, the countries it tries to improve were locally stronger (“Because we live here”).

But, the US cannot simply ignore that Russia got involved in Syria once Obama was unable to get the US people to agree Assad must be punished. The Middle East draws in outside powers and if the US withdraws Russia will be turned to. One last thing, these conflicts may just be a way of burning out inherent demographic and political rivalries

Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice Versa
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton
Purchase Article
Even as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez, who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits argued that Syria’s sturdy police state, which exercised tight control over the country’s people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring undisturbed. ]…
But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C. That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.

Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime, whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability, its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon’s chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced sectarian power-sharing structure. [...]
The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks, such as disastrous national-level reforms.

If these peoples of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan cannot live together they will have to live apart– each in in their own cantons. They won’t do it for themselves, but rather bring in outside powers to win everything. Now is the time for Trump to call time on all sides and demand negotiations, those who continue will recieve just punishment for their temerity. The use of US power will concentrate minds, but he needs to establish credibility first. Hence the strong punitive measures in Syria and Afghanistan. I think the Tomahawks were an expensive gambit, but we didn’t want any slip ups near the Russians. The giant fuel- air bombing (of a nest of killers as local people said) was economical . It won’t take many more before they get the message.

You should read and share this with others who have no idea which are plentiful I personally know.

October 08, 2016 Video: Afghanistan: Fifteen Years of Invasion and Occupation

Fifteen years after NATO’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the 9/11 and Al Qaeda lies that were used to justify the war have disappeared. Now the truth about oil and gas, mineral wealth, opium and naked imperial ambition are all that remain. *The ambitions of Empire*.

A five year Native Born White Christian American child...a little girl...was gang raped and urinated on by three Legal Immigrant Muslim Males who worked at the Chobani Yogurt Plant in Idaho City Idaho City Idaho. And this piece of garbage wants to keep importing Legal Immigrant Muslims. For no other reason than he wants Muslims voting Whitey into a racial minority within the borders of the US.

The US Military needs to be massively defunded. The higher ranking Officer Corp is screening for race-replacement enthusiasts for future Majors...Colonels....and...Generals...

Military budget needs to be cut by 2/3rds. Any white, heterosexual male volunteering into the usa military is a traitor.

Make no mistake: after 15 years of losing wars, spreading terror movements, and multiplying failed states across the Greater Middle East, America will fight the next versions of our ongoing wars.

Which wars did we lose? If the point was to pulverize the various countries there then the mission was accomplished. Turning the area into a jigsaw puzzle of various identities fighting each other and keeping them all weak, ignorant and helpless against the US seems to have been the goal. The talk about ‘nation building’ was just moral cover to fool all the boy scouts out there.
What’s the “next version”, where to next with our military? Iran? In this world it’s dangerous to be a weak state because the US will fall upon them like a hungry predator. The US wars of aggression are just flat-out war crimes that have left millions of people dead, orphaned or fleeing from their traditional homelands. Not that any of our political class cares about such trivial matters, especially when a buck can be turned. Might makes right is the reigning US principle. Instead of thinking about how best to fight the next attack upon some other victim it might be nice to think about how to avoid it altogether. Radical, I know.

Stopped reading after this hideous lie: "After all, it was [Assad's] murderous, barrel-bombing, child-gassing acts that all but caused the civil war in the first place. "

Assad was just dropping barrel bombs on innocent people for no reason whatsoever? Or was it because the "Day of Rage" "protesters" (wink wink wink) murdered dozens of Syrian police officers in coordinated attacks across the country that day?

Shame on the author and shame on Takis. There are already so many al Qaeda propaganda outlets in the West, do we really need another one?

Also, how could a US military strategist fail to take note of the fact that the (((US))) ZOG machine intentionally created al Qaeda and ISIS and continues to foster them through supplying weapons, training, money, logistics and political support? How many videos do we need to see of US coalition planes dropping ammo and food to ISIS until we demand that whoever is in charge be lawfully executed for treason?

Don’t forget usa ambassador Ford’s role:

To recap. Ford now asserts that he and Obama did not want immediate violent “regime change” in Syria. That they wanted to have a dialogue and negotiate with the Assad government.

Rifai, who was there from the very beginning, says that those are lies. In his talks with the opposition Ford argued against any negotiations. His talks were not about peace or dialogue. They were for blatant, violent “regime change”.

Silly ZIGgie propaganda inoculation…..presenting common knowledge as some kind of dramatic revelation. Half of Trumpstein’s (claims a Swedish lineage, haha) cabinet members are ny jooies. Wife is nose job jooie. Daughter (converted, haha) is jooie. Pencil neck SIL ortho jooie. Media is jooie. Central bank is jooie. Vile social democracy has morphed into a new reality show “Jooies Gone Wild”…..where 5 million inbred nitwits with high criminal IQ dictate reality to 330 million lazy overweight morons. What else do you need to know?

Let this think into your head:A five year old Native Born White Christian American Child…a little girl…was gang raped and urinated on by three of your beloved Syrian Legal Immigrant Refugees in Idaho City Idaho…They worked at the Chobani Yogurt Plant in Idaho City….

Permitted at West Point:Sheboon Cadet Black Power Salute in a group photo

Not permitted at West Point:White Male Cadets giving the White Power Salute in a group photo..

Not permitted at West Point in the very near future:Native Born White Male Cadets

West Point post-2020:Pakistani Muslim “American” Commadant….to the very great joy of Colonel Danny Sjursen and 4 star General Robert Casey

Question:What did General Robert Casey say after the Fort Hood Massacre?

Question:What will General Danny Sjursen say after another Fort Hood Massacre in the future?

West Point Cadet Danny Sjursen was mentored and tutored on the Blessings of Diversity at West Point by SF Lesbian….I assume she is…..and high paid advisor to US Mega-Corporations that have rackets in the Middle East and Africa….Liane Kennedy Bouldali

West Point is churning out an SPLC indoctrinated SJW Officer Corp…Defund the US Military Completely..

Professor Sjursen

You should tell the Sheeboon Cadets that Emit Till got what he deserved for whistling at young White Southern Woman with infants in strollers….And…I highly recommend that you tell the Sheboon Cadets in your class about Louis Till….Emitts’s father…

The main thesis of the author is sound. The US policy is self defeating, destructive and in the end it strengthens ISIS. However, the author as most Americans focuses on the US policy as if US policy matters. In reality whatever the US does or does not will not change substantially the larger social, economic and ideological processes in the Middle East. These are:
First: population exposition in the region that generates tens of million people every ten years that cannot be absorbed into local economy. They are attracted to more prosperous neighboring Europe which detests them but still rescues them from the sea by the hundreds of thousands every year thus increasing the pool of angry young Muslims in Europe. The US action or inaction on this front changes nothing.
Second: tribal religious identity fragmentation of the region. In each of the ME country there is a significant religious or tribal or ethnic minority. For centuries they lived in oblivion and no one ever knew about Christians in Syria. Now for the first time in centuries we have a conflict in Syria, In Egypt between Christians and Muslims. Actually it is not a conflict it is Sunny aggression against the Christians. Alowites, Shia, Druze, Yazidies, Sunnies are suddenly rediscovering their religious, tribal, regional identities as the only thing that matters to them. Assad's most reliable units of the army are Alawites. In Bahrein the Shia majority is waiting for a convenient moment to overthrow the rule of the Sunny dynasty as they did in Yemen. Even in Morocco the long dormant Berbers are rediscovering their ancient non-Arab identity. This is the process that Huntington called indigenization. What can the US do about it? Absolutely nothing.
Third: And finally, the moral dimension. The author is right the American policy reveals is hypocrisy, double standard that generates more hostility to the US. But here again, the deeper, underlying issue is the moral decay of the West, something that Ben Laden also wrote about. For the good practicing Muslims who are not supporters of ISIS or anyone close to those folks, for whom the US and Europe are countries they potentially would like to work or visit for those people equalization of marriage between a man and a woman with the gays is unacceptable and incomprehensible. That is only one example. What they dislike is the collapse of the family, of parental authority, of morals and lifestyles. They detest endless stream of semi naked women in mass media, my body my sex propaganda in journals like Cosmopolitan. It is a clash of civilizations of traditional values and Western permissiveness, abandonment of what really are Christian family values. Here again the US cannot do anything about. That clash is going to grow and blow up into the face of the West.

Cosmopolitan is a WOMEN’S magazine, not a porn magazine bought by men. Cosmo is a fashion and beauty magazine for young women. It also has some good advice about jobs, doing well once one gets the job, cars and apartments and furniture for young people just starting out.

The Muslim countries have the highest rate of both hetero and male homo internet porn use in the world and you think Cosmo is degenerate? You must be a fanatic Muslim.

In the west rape, slavery sex slavery and sex with minors is illegal. In Muslim countries rape is not a crime, rape victims even 5 year olds are murdered by their families including their mothers and the men are so oversexed that the sight of the arm or ankle of a women drives them beserk.

Are you a Swedish or German feminazi who defends Muslim immigrant rape on the grounds that when Muslim immigrants see a woman not covered in black shrouds from head to foot the Muslim man has the right to rape the woman because she outrages his sense of modesty?

What kind of man reads Cosmopolitan anyway? Do you need advice not to wear black nail polish to a job interview?

Major Danny Sjursen is another example of the many rootless-placeless creatures manufactured at West Point and the other Military Academies since 1971. White Teenage Males enter West Point and then get indoctrinated into the placeless-rootless Cosmopolitan World View...and then sent off for multiple tours of duty in far away lands-for further training in disconnecting emotionally and psychologically from the Historic American Nation...Up to the point of hating The Historic Native Born White American Nation so much...that a West Point Professor of Civil Rights of Scandavian ancestry is enthusiastic about inflicting a Mohammadan Somalian Gang Rape Army on the Scandanavian American Teenage Girls of Minnesota.

Major Sjursen was immersed in SPLC Civil Rights indoctrination as a Cadet. He now teaches the history of Civil Rights to the SheboonWest Point Cadets who give enthusiastic Black Power salutes in group photos. Major Sjursen will advance his career in the homo-friendly US Military by enthusiastically demonizing the Native Born White Working Class resistance to the open and deliberate policy of post-1965 race-replacement immigration policy.

Major Danny Sjursen=domestic version of War is a Racket...

Thanks so much for the information about this anti women, anti western civilization pro Muslim writer.
I had no idea West Point was just a nest of liberal rattlesnakes as the rest of academia.

Make no mistake: after 15 years of losing wars, spreading terror movements, and multiplying failed states across the Greater Middle East, America will fight the next versions of our ongoing wars. Not that we ever really stopped. Sure, Washington traded in George W. Bush’s expansive, almost messianic attitude toward his Global War on Terror for Barack Obama’s more precise, deliberate, even cautious approach to an unnamed version of the same war for hegemony in the Greater Middle East. Sure, in the process kitted-up 19 year-olds from Iowa became less ubiquitous features on Baghdad’s and Kabul’s busy boulevards, even if that distinction was lost on the real-life targets of America’s wars — and the bystanders (call them “collateral damage”) scurrying across digital drone display screens.

It’s hardly a brilliant observation to point out that, more than 15 years later, the entire region is a remarkable mess. So much worse off than Washington found it, even if all of that mess can’t simply be blamed on the United States — at least not directly. It’s too late now, as the Trump administration is discovering, to retreat behind two oceans and cover our collective eyes. And yet, acts that might still do some modest amount of good (resettling refugees, sending aid, brokering truces, anything within reason to limit suffering) don’t seem to be on any American agenda.

America had a lot of illusions in Vietnam and in the Middle East as well. Strong as the Superpower was, the countries it tries to improve were locally stronger ("Because we live here").

But, the US cannot simply ignore that Russia got involved in Syria once Obama was unable to get the US people to agree Assad must be punished. The Middle East draws in outside powers and if the US withdraws Russia will be turned to. One last thing, these conflicts may just be a way of burning out inherent demographic and political rivalries

Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice VersaBy Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. TrevertonPurchase ArticleEven as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez, who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits argued that Syria’s sturdy police state, which exercised tight control over the country’s people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring undisturbed. ]…But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C. That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.

Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime, whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability, its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon’s chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced sectarian power-sharing structure. [...]The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks, such as disastrous national-level reforms.

If these peoples of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan cannot live together they will have to live apart-- each in in their own cantons. They won't do it for themselves, but rather bring in outside powers to win everything. Now is the time for Trump to call time on all sides and demand negotiations, those who continue will recieve just punishment for their temerity. The use of US power will concentrate minds, but he needs to establish credibility first. Hence the strong punitive measures in Syria and Afghanistan. I think the Tomahawks were an expensive gambit, but we didn't want any slip ups near the Russians. The giant fuel- air bombing (of a nest of killers as local people said) was economical . It won't take many more before they get the message.

You should read and share this with others who have no idea which are plentiful I personally know.

October 08, 2016 Video: Afghanistan: Fifteen Years of Invasion and Occupation

Fifteen years after NATO’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the 9/11 and Al Qaeda lies that were used to justify the war have disappeared. Now the truth about oil and gas, mineral wealth, opium and naked imperial ambition are all that remain. *The ambitions of Empire*.

Cosmopolitan is a WOMEN'S magazine, not a porn magazine bought by men. Cosmo is a fashion and beauty magazine for young women. It also has some good advice about jobs, doing well once one gets the job, cars and apartments and furniture for young people just starting out.

The Muslim countries have the highest rate of both hetero and male homo internet porn use in the world and you think Cosmo is degenerate? You must be a fanatic Muslim.

In the west rape, slavery sex slavery and sex with minors is illegal. In Muslim countries rape is not a crime, rape victims even 5 year olds are murdered by their families including their mothers and the men are so oversexed that the sight of the arm or ankle of a women drives them beserk.

Are you a Swedish or German feminazi who defends Muslim immigrant rape on the grounds that when Muslim immigrants see a woman not covered in black shrouds from head to foot the Muslim man has the right to rape the woman because she outrages his sense of modesty?

What kind of man reads Cosmopolitan anyway? Do you need advice not to wear black nail polish to a job interview?

Cosmopolitan is a WOMEN’S magazine, not a porn magazine bought by men.

But it really can work both ways.

It also has all kinds of silly “trendy” lifestyle advice from a barbie world that is completely unreal. Things like how to avoid the engineer and hook the banker. Really.

You should read and share this with others who have no idea which are plentiful I personally know.

October 08, 2016 Video: Afghanistan: Fifteen Years of Invasion and Occupation

Fifteen years after NATO’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the 9/11 and Al Qaeda lies that were used to justify the war have disappeared. Now the truth about oil and gas, mineral wealth, opium and naked imperial ambition are all that remain. *The ambitions of Empire*.

Tom’s Dispatch, of course, is DOD approved – the people must be given something simple to believe in, the real war is for your mind, and what better nonsense than the comfortable idea of winning and losing? Credulous children believe the tales of American war mongers employed by empire – who appear to be anti-war. Ironic isn’t it? They promulgate fake opposition to war in their widely broadcast columns. If you can’t control the opposition, you can’t win the real war.

The winners of the Iraq war occupy 7000 square foot “mansions” as far as the eye can see in some American counties. You can see their office towers and logos too. That’s the good war “peace lovers” like Astore and Bacevich fight for. You do believe them don’t you?

This article is about 7 years late to the party, when there still was reason to believe we were fighting a “War on Terror” and simply losing. If any doubts remained, the Lybia episode followed by our involvement in Syria and Ukraine ended what this War’s purpose was. The chaos IS the strategy. How quaint to think we are actually “fighting” ISIS. Sure, we do sporadically in Iraq, but more often we foster it. There’s no “next” war; its all one, big, immoral, imperial plan being executed.

The real long term goal appears to be to destroy any potential rivals to US/Israeli/Saudi/Gulf Emirate hegemony in the region. That is why Syria is a proxy war between those entities (plus the Turks who seem more concerned with the Kurds) using jihadi mercenaries and Kurdish revolutionaries as cannon fodder, and Assad, Iran, and Hezbollah. Iran and Lebanon know they’re next.

Russia’s entry into the Syrian fray is a game-changer.

They are, slowly and methodically, changing the facts on the ground in Syria. A Russian victory in Syria would present a major strategic defeat for the AngloZionist Empire. Especially when Putin offers Europe the opportunity to repatriate the refugees back to Syria, as I think he will.

Cosmopolitan is a WOMEN'S magazine, not a porn magazine bought by men. Cosmo is a fashion and beauty magazine for young women. It also has some good advice about jobs, doing well once one gets the job, cars and apartments and furniture for young people just starting out.

The Muslim countries have the highest rate of both hetero and male homo internet porn use in the world and you think Cosmo is degenerate? You must be a fanatic Muslim.

In the west rape, slavery sex slavery and sex with minors is illegal. In Muslim countries rape is not a crime, rape victims even 5 year olds are murdered by their families including their mothers and the men are so oversexed that the sight of the arm or ankle of a women drives them beserk.

Are you a Swedish or German feminazi who defends Muslim immigrant rape on the grounds that when Muslim immigrants see a woman not covered in black shrouds from head to foot the Muslim man has the right to rape the woman because she outrages his sense of modesty?

What kind of man reads Cosmopolitan anyway? Do you need advice not to wear black nail polish to a job interview?

Cosmopolitan is a WOMEN’S magazine, not a porn magazine bought by men. Cosmo is a fashion and beauty magazine for young women

Read what he actually wrote. And LOL at the idea that Cosmo isn’t porn.

Make no mistake: after 15 years of losing wars, spreading terror movements, and multiplying failed states across the Greater Middle East, America will fight the next versions of our ongoing wars. Not that we ever really stopped. Sure, Washington traded in George W. Bush’s expansive, almost messianic attitude toward his Global War on Terror for Barack Obama’s more precise, deliberate, even cautious approach to an unnamed version of the same war for hegemony in the Greater Middle East. Sure, in the process kitted-up 19 year-olds from Iowa became less ubiquitous features on Baghdad’s and Kabul’s busy boulevards, even if that distinction was lost on the real-life targets of America’s wars — and the bystanders (call them “collateral damage”) scurrying across digital drone display screens.

It’s hardly a brilliant observation to point out that, more than 15 years later, the entire region is a remarkable mess. So much worse off than Washington found it, even if all of that mess can’t simply be blamed on the United States — at least not directly. It’s too late now, as the Trump administration is discovering, to retreat behind two oceans and cover our collective eyes. And yet, acts that might still do some modest amount of good (resettling refugees, sending aid, brokering truces, anything within reason to limit suffering) don’t seem to be on any American agenda.

America had a lot of illusions in Vietnam and in the Middle East as well. Strong as the Superpower was, the countries it tries to improve were locally stronger ("Because we live here").

But, the US cannot simply ignore that Russia got involved in Syria once Obama was unable to get the US people to agree Assad must be punished. The Middle East draws in outside powers and if the US withdraws Russia will be turned to. One last thing, these conflicts may just be a way of burning out inherent demographic and political rivalries

Why Volatility Signals Stability, and Vice VersaBy Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. TrevertonPurchase ArticleEven as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez, who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits argued that Syria’s sturdy police state, which exercised tight control over the country’s people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring undisturbed. ]…But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C. That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.

Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime, whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability, its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon’s chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced sectarian power-sharing structure. [...]The first marker of a fragile state is a concentrated decision-making system.funds, at the price of increasing systemic risks, such as disastrous national-level reforms.

If these peoples of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan cannot live together they will have to live apart-- each in in their own cantons. They won't do it for themselves, but rather bring in outside powers to win everything. Now is the time for Trump to call time on all sides and demand negotiations, those who continue will recieve just punishment for their temerity. The use of US power will concentrate minds, but he needs to establish credibility first. Hence the strong punitive measures in Syria and Afghanistan. I think the Tomahawks were an expensive gambit, but we didn't want any slip ups near the Russians. The giant fuel- air bombing (of a nest of killers as local people said) was economical . It won't take many more before they get the message.

I believe that for Russia and China a loss in Syria and its consequences will result in total encirclement by the West. For this reasons it is a red line for them. I also believe that it is a red line for the West too. Therefore if reason prevails there will be a negotiated settlement. All the unfortunate finger pointing, moral pronouncements, and escalations are just posturing for better positions at the negotiating table.

I somewhat agree. However, there is far more at stake for Russia, China, and Iran than the West (minus Israel). Theirs is a more existential threat rather than an Imperial/hegemonic threat for the West. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Israelis did some stupid shit to try to draw us further into the conflict in Syria, which is trending toward Russian victory if left alone.

“After all, it was his murderous, barrel-bombing, child-gassing acts that all but caused the civil war in the first place.”
Child gassing is total bogus as already proven in 2013 when Obama was pressured by his neo cons to bomb Syria under the false flag that was discredited by Carla Del Ponte and Seymour Hersh.
Barrel bombing is a poor state substitute to expensive laser guided missiles that are the standard weapon of choice of Americans and their minions with far deadlier effects.
And no the war was not caused by the Syrian regime, which no doubt was a heavy handed security based state apparatus, but by Anglo Zionist instigations backed by Turkish logistical support and Gulf Petro dollars that fuelled the war in Syria.
Otherwise, this article is just fine.

I believe that for Russia and China a loss in Syria and its consequences will result in total encirclement by the West. For this reasons it is a red line for them. I also believe that it is a red line for the West too. Therefore if reason prevails there will be a negotiated settlement. All the unfortunate finger pointing, moral pronouncements, and escalations are just posturing for better positions at the negotiating table.

I somewhat agree. However, there is far more at stake for Russia, China, and Iran than the West (minus Israel). Theirs is a more existential threat rather than an Imperial/hegemonic threat for the West. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Israelis did some stupid shit to try to draw us further into the conflict in Syria, which is trending toward Russian victory if left alone.

Make no mistake: after 15 years of losing wars, spreading terror movements, and multiplying failed states across the Greater Middle East, America will fight the next versions of our ongoing wars.

Correct. Everything goes according to the Plan. Countries to be destroyed. Terrorism is to be spread. These are planned and desired outcomes. These wars are actually won not lost.

Correct. Everything goes according to the Plan. Countries to be destroyed. Terrorism is to be spread. These are planned and desired outcomes. These wars are actually won not lost.

I agree with you. It is almost as if there is a conspiracy to fill the collective head space with superficial linear thinking. A sequence of implemented game plans that verifies the model and then is applied with full force to the hard nuts. The model is likely called humpty-dumpty-stans.

This guy is obviously an enthusiast for importing Muslims into the US. I can only conclude that he is a Liberal Democrat who who is an enthusiast for radically changing the racial demographics of the US vis importing nonwhite Legal Immigrants. That is to say, he wants a nonwhite majority. He is waging Democratic Party demographic war against The Historic Native Born White American Majority. He's a punk. This is the trash being produced by West Point.

If we don't allow Muslims into the US...we piss off ISIS...and young Muslim "American" Males will therefore become radicalized and commit acts of terror on US soil. I see this as a reason for expelling all Muslims....Never have to worry about a ISIS terrorist attacked on US soil.

Another General Casey in the making.

This creep wants Muslims to come legally into America, so they can legally vote The Historic Native Born White American Majority into a racial minorityinto a violently persecuted racial minority.

Refugees are NOT "guaranteed job placement, housing, healthcare, education, and so on…"
They get assistance for the first 2 or 3 months, after which they MAY get additional help from churches and other charities. They are even billed to reimburse the US gov't. for the cost of airfare to come here.

(Except, of course, for those Russian Jews, which was apparently an entirely different matter.)

Major Sjursen predicates his Import MORE Islam-or-Moslems-will-be-angry-with-us spiel on the same phony blackmail, lose-lose premise that Colin Flaherty’s Don’t Make The Black Kids Angry exposed about official U.S. race policy.

Let me sum up, in just one sentence, the bottom line, common sense reason for the U.S. to keep its military out of foreign countries that pose no threat to the United States: “to provide for the common defense,” not to provide for and wage unconstitutional Global Perpetual Offensive War.

Despite the caveats put at the end of the article, the author is a military employee and anything he writes is with the consent of the military hierarchy. The US military likes to think it is the best in the world but its performance in the Middle East and elsewhere in the last 15 years has been abject. There are obviously many serious weaknesses in the military which have caused this situation.As a military apologist, Sjursen's job is to deflect criticism of the military by blaming everybody else. There is no criticism of the military per se. Now the criticism of other actors in the Middle East may be well merited. Often, however, Sjursen just regurgitates the usual fake news seen on MSM.Thus President Assad's " murderous, barrel bombing, child-gassing acts that all but caused the war in the first place. " There is no real evidence of any of this. And the insurrection was ending in Autumn 2011 when the US, Saudi Arabia et al started to supply ISIS and others with the weapons. If military high command felt the wars were unconstitutional, or the military were being tasked with wars incapable of conclusion, then officers should have resigned and told the world their reasons. As it is, the number of high ranking officers who resigned over Iraq, Afghanistan and other matters is very, very small.I don't take this Sjursen guy seriously. He is just a PR man for some very unsavoury individuals.

“…The US military likes to think it is the best in the world but its performance in the Middle East and elsewhere in the last 15 years has been abject…”

This kind of talk is by people who don’t understand that we have limited troops. We do not have enough troops to stabilize several countries at once. How many actual armed troops can we field at one time? 50,000, 100,000?? It’s not a lot as 1/3 will be retraining, 1/3 will be resting and rearming and 1/3 will be fighting.

Now if we were in a fight for our lives and it was kill everyone you could the pattern would change rapidly. We could kill off the whole middle east fairly quick even conventionally. So it’s not a matter of us not being able to win it’s that we don’t choose to genocide the population.

How long do you think Afghanistan could hold out if we attacked in sectors, killed all the Men and enslaved the Women and Children and sold them?

This is partially true. There is no doubt that the US does not fight like they did in WW2 (thank God) and much of that is self imposed. But there are also limits that the current world imposes.

Let's take for instance Afghanistan. Our entire supply line runs through Pakistan (part of our air missions were run through Uzbekistan) - without it, we would lose any modern field army that was deployed. Pakistan would have to stand by while we went genocidal on the Afghans. And if they didn't, and we wanted to fight our way through; 1) Pakistan has nukes and 2) you'd have to go through Karachi (a prospect that makes military takeover of LA seem like a nice thought) - you could bomb it into Stalingrad-status and still and, well, it would be our Stalingrad.

Refugees are NOT “guaranteed job placement, housing, healthcare, education, and so on…”
They get assistance for the first 2 or 3 months, after which they MAY get additional help from churches and other charities. They are even billed to reimburse the US gov’t. for the cost of airfare to come here.

(Except, of course, for those Russian Jews, which was apparently an entirely different matter.)

{Refugees are NOT “guaranteed job placement, housing, healthcare, education, and so on…”}

Supreme court has said (1982) that States cannot deny K-12 education to illegal immigrants. So, yes, K-12 education is guaranteed to refugees.Every child in US is guaranteed K-12 education.

As to healthcare: Federal law Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) requires that emergency healthcare be provided regardless of ability to pay. It is common knowledge that people who have no insurance choose emergency rooms to get medical care. Obviously, if one is a refugee, they are very unlikely to be able to cover the costs, so taxpayers or those who pay for insurance end up footing the bill. (hospital eats the cost, which means others who pay cover the losses in a roundabout way.)

I don't know much about the housing 'guarantee', but I am sure when refugees are brought in, they are provided some kind of public housing until they can be on their own. I mean, government can't just let them live on the street.

As to jobs: there is no guarantee to a job, but if they cannot work, they will get EBT (food stamps), so they don't go hungry.

{They are even billed to reimburse the US gov’t. for the cost of airfare to come here.}

I find that hard to believe, given that each refugee receives a grant of $1,850 upon arrival in US (in addition to other benefits).US Gov gives them $1,850 each then bills them for airfare? Makes no sense.

The "assistance" from the churches consists of loading them on the church bus and taking them to the local welfare office and arranging for lifelong welfare, medi caid, section 8, food stamps free bus passes etc.

Refugees are NOT "guaranteed job placement, housing, healthcare, education, and so on…"
They get assistance for the first 2 or 3 months, after which they MAY get additional help from churches and other charities. They are even billed to reimburse the US gov't. for the cost of airfare to come here.

(Except, of course, for those Russian Jews, which was apparently an entirely different matter.)

{Refugees are NOT “guaranteed job placement, housing, healthcare, education, and so on…”}

Supreme court has said (1982) that States cannot deny K-12 education to illegal immigrants. So, yes, K-12 education is guaranteed to refugees.
Every child in US is guaranteed K-12 education.

As to healthcare: Federal law Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) requires that emergency healthcare be provided regardless of ability to pay. It is common knowledge that people who have no insurance choose emergency rooms to get medical care. Obviously, if one is a refugee, they are very unlikely to be able to cover the costs, so taxpayers or those who pay for insurance end up footing the bill. (hospital eats the cost, which means others who pay cover the losses in a roundabout way.)

I don’t know much about the housing ‘guarantee’, but I am sure when refugees are brought in, they are provided some kind of public housing until they can be on their own. I mean, government can’t just let them live on the street.

As to jobs: there is no guarantee to a job, but if they cannot work, they will get EBT (food stamps), so they don’t go hungry.

{They are even billed to reimburse the US gov’t. for the cost of airfare to come here.}

I find that hard to believe, given that each refugee receives a grant of $1,850 upon arrival in US (in addition to other benefits).US Gov gives them $1,850 each then bills them for airfare? Makes no sense.

"...The US military likes to think it is the best in the world but its performance in the Middle East and elsewhere in the last 15 years has been abject..."

This kind of talk is by people who don't understand that we have limited troops. We do not have enough troops to stabilize several countries at once. How many actual armed troops can we field at one time? 50,000, 100,000?? It's not a lot as 1/3 will be retraining, 1/3 will be resting and rearming and 1/3 will be fighting.

Now if we were in a fight for our lives and it was kill everyone you could the pattern would change rapidly. We could kill off the whole middle east fairly quick even conventionally. So it's not a matter of us not being able to win it's that we don't choose to genocide the population.

How long do you think Afghanistan could hold out if we attacked in sectors, killed all the Men and enslaved the Women and Children and sold them?

” We could kill the whole middle east fairly quick even conventionally. ”
Mass conventional bombing was very successful in Vietnam and Korea. Not

“How long do you think Afghanistan could hold out if we attacked in sectors.”
The US military has already done so and the Pathans still control most of the country.

“killed all the men”
Yes, the US military has become quite proficient at committing atrocities. A lot less proficient at winning wars, though.

"...The US military likes to think it is the best in the world but its performance in the Middle East and elsewhere in the last 15 years has been abject..."

This kind of talk is by people who don't understand that we have limited troops. We do not have enough troops to stabilize several countries at once. How many actual armed troops can we field at one time? 50,000, 100,000?? It's not a lot as 1/3 will be retraining, 1/3 will be resting and rearming and 1/3 will be fighting.

Now if we were in a fight for our lives and it was kill everyone you could the pattern would change rapidly. We could kill off the whole middle east fairly quick even conventionally. So it's not a matter of us not being able to win it's that we don't choose to genocide the population.

How long do you think Afghanistan could hold out if we attacked in sectors, killed all the Men and enslaved the Women and Children and sold them?

Maybe in a Hollywood horror movie. In the real world we know that there are some other powerful nations that would not just stand by and let us do it.

"...The US military likes to think it is the best in the world but its performance in the Middle East and elsewhere in the last 15 years has been abject..."

This kind of talk is by people who don't understand that we have limited troops. We do not have enough troops to stabilize several countries at once. How many actual armed troops can we field at one time? 50,000, 100,000?? It's not a lot as 1/3 will be retraining, 1/3 will be resting and rearming and 1/3 will be fighting.

Now if we were in a fight for our lives and it was kill everyone you could the pattern would change rapidly. We could kill off the whole middle east fairly quick even conventionally. So it's not a matter of us not being able to win it's that we don't choose to genocide the population.

How long do you think Afghanistan could hold out if we attacked in sectors, killed all the Men and enslaved the Women and Children and sold them?

Hey SamJ,

This is partially true. There is no doubt that the US does not fight like they did in WW2 (thank God) and much of that is self imposed. But there are also limits that the current world imposes.

Let’s take for instance Afghanistan. Our entire supply line runs through Pakistan (part of our air missions were run through Uzbekistan) – without it, we would lose any modern field army that was deployed. Pakistan would have to stand by while we went genocidal on the Afghans. And if they didn’t, and we wanted to fight our way through; 1) Pakistan has nukes and 2) you’d have to go through Karachi (a prospect that makes military takeover of LA seem like a nice thought) – you could bomb it into Stalingrad-status and still and, well, it would be our Stalingrad.

Actually I think they do fight like they used to in WWII. British troops in Italy considered the Yanks to be so trigger happy they were just as worried about being mistakenly shot by them as they were by the enemy.

During the first gulf war, or Stormin Norman's war, some 25% of combat casualties, 1 in 4, were due to friendly fire (My hope is to never get that friendly ;o) and apparently more servicemen have committed suicide in Afghanistan than have been killed by the Taliban. This is tragic indeed and I would have thought cause enough to trigger a mass mutiny.

Houston, we have a problem! One that is being ignored by the tough-talking chickenhawks and Israel Firsters who are calling the shots/pardon the pun.

I think it is just as likely that the US military and its militarised police will soon be killing Americans more than anyone else as the dissatisfaction in society grows and they are called upon to defend the lives and property of the elite to maintain "law and order". That is when Americans try to take back America.

It's been said US lost in Vietnam. But US was untouched. Its people went on having BBQs, partying, dancing, etc.

In contrast, Vietnam lost 2 million people and the nation was devastated.

It's been said US failed to win in Iraq. Some say US lost. But US wasn't touched by the war. People went shopping, watched TV, ate and drank and got fat.

In contrast, 100,000s of Iraqis died and millions had their lives ruined.

So, it doesn't matter if US 'loses' the next war in the Middle East. The fact is US will be untouched. In contrast, even if the Middle Eastern nation does not lose to the US or even 'wins', its nation will be devastated, and 100,000s will have died, millions will have been affected.

To 'win' against the US is far more traumatic and damaging than it is for the US to 'lose'.

Given all the horrors the US committed in the Middle East and Libya since the Cold War, the US really deserves the Japan-Germany treatment in WWII.

US does its 'losing' in other people's nations. This 'losing' devastates other nations while the American Nation remains untouched by bombs, invasions, missiles, tanks, jets, etc.

US needs to stop 'losing' in other people's lands. Even when they 'win', they lose so many lives and see their entire cities destroyed while Americans remain safe and get fat on burgers.

US needs to stop ‘losing’ in other people’s lands. Even when they ‘win’, they lose so many lives and see their entire cities destroyed while Americans remain safe and get fat on burgers.

That’s true enough, but what’s really surprising is the US public’s total lack of concern/empathy for the massive destruction they’re inflicting on civilians in the Middle East, and their indifference to their government lying to them on WMD.

So I would say that they’re safe and fat, but also sleazy and broke, since that’s what happens when deficit nations spend 15 years fighting these kind of wars on credit.

That’s true enough, but what’s really surprising is the US public’s total lack of concern/empathy for the massive destruction they’re inflicting on civilians in the Middle East, and their indifference to their government lying to them on WMD.

Very true and very depressing. I can go for weeks without encountering anyone who expresses any concern for any of the victims of US policy. Instead, it's always 'nuke 'em'. It's downright disgusting.

US needs to stop ‘losing’ in other people’s lands. Even when they ‘win’, they lose so many lives and see their entire cities destroyed while Americans remain safe and get fat on burgers.

That's true enough, but what's really surprising is the US public's total lack of concern/empathy for the massive destruction they're inflicting on civilians in the Middle East, and their indifference to their government lying to them on WMD.

So I would say that they're safe and fat, but also sleazy and broke, since that's what happens when deficit nations spend 15 years fighting these kind of wars on credit.

That’s true enough, but what’s really surprising is the US public’s total lack of concern/empathy for the massive destruction they’re inflicting on civilians in the Middle East, and their indifference to their government lying to them on WMD.

Very true and very depressing. I can go for weeks without encountering anyone who expresses any concern for any of the victims of US policy. Instead, it’s always ‘nuke ‘em’. It’s downright disgusting.

This is partially true. There is no doubt that the US does not fight like they did in WW2 (thank God) and much of that is self imposed. But there are also limits that the current world imposes.

Let's take for instance Afghanistan. Our entire supply line runs through Pakistan (part of our air missions were run through Uzbekistan) - without it, we would lose any modern field army that was deployed. Pakistan would have to stand by while we went genocidal on the Afghans. And if they didn't, and we wanted to fight our way through; 1) Pakistan has nukes and 2) you'd have to go through Karachi (a prospect that makes military takeover of LA seem like a nice thought) - you could bomb it into Stalingrad-status and still and, well, it would be our Stalingrad.

Peace.

Actually I think they do fight like they used to in WWII. British troops in Italy considered the Yanks to be so trigger happy they were just as worried about being mistakenly shot by them as they were by the enemy.

During the first gulf war, or Stormin Norman’s war, some 25% of combat casualties, 1 in 4, were due to friendly fire (My hope is to never get that friendly ;o) and apparently more servicemen have committed suicide in Afghanistan than have been killed by the Taliban. This is tragic indeed and I would have thought cause enough to trigger a mass mutiny.

Houston, we have a problem! One that is being ignored by the tough-talking chickenhawks and Israel Firsters who are calling the shots/pardon the pun.

I think it is just as likely that the US military and its militarised police will soon be killing Americans more than anyone else as the dissatisfaction in society grows and they are called upon to defend the lives and property of the elite to maintain “law and order”. That is when Americans try to take back America.

When you started with "barrel bombs" (the biggest propaganda joke recent years), I stopped reading.

I came to the same thought. “Barrel bomb” is a trite bit of silliness that rolls off the tongue, but it discredits the user immediately. In addition, the writer implies that “barrel bombs” were the cause, not the response, to the uprising.

Exactly. IOW, Propaganda.
For some actual truth by an independent Western journalist in Syria, including the silly 'barrel bombs' BS, the following is a must read:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/04/23/aleppo-after-devastation-the-rehabilitation-part-one/

Actually I think they do fight like they used to in WWII. British troops in Italy considered the Yanks to be so trigger happy they were just as worried about being mistakenly shot by them as they were by the enemy.

During the first gulf war, or Stormin Norman's war, some 25% of combat casualties, 1 in 4, were due to friendly fire (My hope is to never get that friendly ;o) and apparently more servicemen have committed suicide in Afghanistan than have been killed by the Taliban. This is tragic indeed and I would have thought cause enough to trigger a mass mutiny.

Houston, we have a problem! One that is being ignored by the tough-talking chickenhawks and Israel Firsters who are calling the shots/pardon the pun.

I think it is just as likely that the US military and its militarised police will soon be killing Americans more than anyone else as the dissatisfaction in society grows and they are called upon to defend the lives and property of the elite to maintain "law and order". That is when Americans try to take back America.

Hey NtD,

Trigger-happy? No doubt. If I was being invaded, I’d rather it be done by the Brits (first pick) or the French rather than the US

Refugees are NOT "guaranteed job placement, housing, healthcare, education, and so on…"
They get assistance for the first 2 or 3 months, after which they MAY get additional help from churches and other charities. They are even billed to reimburse the US gov't. for the cost of airfare to come here.

(Except, of course, for those Russian Jews, which was apparently an entirely different matter.)

The “assistance” from the churches consists of loading them on the church bus and taking them to the local welfare office and arranging for lifelong welfare, medi caid, section 8, food stamps free bus passes etc.

The "assistance" from the churches consists of loading them on the church bus and taking them to the local welfare office and arranging for lifelong welfare, medi caid, section 8, food stamps free bus passes etc.

Alleged refugees and illegal immigrants squatting in section 8, government housing and formerly cheap market value housing are a big cause of homelessness.

I came to the same thought. "Barrel bomb" is a trite bit of silliness that rolls off the tongue, but it discredits the user immediately. In addition, the writer implies that "barrel bombs" were the cause, not the response, to the uprising.

This article is clever mixture of truth and fiction.

This article is clever mixture of truth and fiction.

Exactly. IOW, Propaganda.
For some actual truth by an independent Western journalist in Syria, including the silly ‘barrel bombs’ BS, the following is a must read:

Republics are imperiled when a military caste diverges from civil society. Despite the glowing (if shallow) praise heaped on America’s all-volunteer force, it is increasingly distant from the population in whose name it theoretically fights.

The regular army is doing little fighting in these war zones (declared or otherwise). We are not fighting solder against solder, taking ground in the process. It is not man vs man in an honorable fight.

Today most all the actual fighting is being done by special forces. Our current fighters are glorified assassins. They target people who have been spied on by drones. Civilians die in the process. We kill and leave. Take no land – leave hate behind. There are always new people to take the place of the dead.

The same with the air force – drones spy – drones kill – spotters spy – bombs fall, killing all. New people take the place of the dead.

Use of multiple, non-Anonymous handles for commenting on this webzine is strongly discouraged, and your secret (real or fictitious) email allows you to authenticate your commenter-identity, preventing others from assuming it, accidentally or otherwise.

Therefore, keeping your Name+Email combination is important, and the 'Remember' feature saves it for you as a cookie on your device/browser.

Also, activating the 'Remember' feature enables the Agree/Disagree/LOL/Troll buttons on all comments.

Email Replies to my Comment

Body of Comment

Submitted comments become the property of The Unz Review and may be republished elsewhere at the sole discretion of the latter